Moretown Landfill came under new ownership last September and the new owners want to meet the public. On Thursday, January 17, Moretown will host a public forum.

The forum takes place at the Moretown Town Hall with the landfill portion starting at 7:30 p.m.

In the first half of the forum, which begins at 7 p.m., the Moretown Select Board will ask for public input regarding the repair and replacement of sidewalks in the village.

In the second half of the forum, representatives from Advanced Disposal Services, the solid waste management company that owns Moretown Landfill, will give a presentation outlining the facility’s updated improvement plan.

“A lot of people don’t realize that Advanced Disposal is a completely different company than Interstate Waste Services, [which owned the landfill until September of 2012],” chief marketing officer Mary O’Brien said, explaining that the facility is currently operating under an entirely new management team than it was this past summer.

So, part of the presentation is “to introduce ourselves,” O’Brien said, as well as to outline a number of the improvements the landfill is making to its gas collection system in order to better comply with state standards, including the temporary capping of its third trash cell.

Moretown Landfill’s recertification permit is still under review by the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources (ANR), which stated its intent to deny the landfill’s recertification in December.

For the time being, however, the facility is still permitted to accept trash and has the available air space to do so, although it has reduced its intake from 550 tons per day to 200 tons per day and turned its focus towards making improvements.

“We’re looking at this as a long-term project,” O’Brien said. “We want to prove to the town and to the state that we have the technology to do things correctly.”

“We need the support of the town to make these changes,” O’Brien said, as she hopes “that the landfill can continue to support the town.”